Human pluripotent stem cells (human embryonic stem cells and induced pluripotent stem cells (collectively hPSCs)) have the potential to differentiate into any cell type of the human body. These cells provide access to the earliest stages of human development and offer a plentiful platform for the derivation of large number of specialized cell types useful for tissue engineering and therapeutic purposes. To date, our ability to harness the differentiation potential of human pluripotent stem cells has been hampered by incomplete understanding of the factors that govern their differentiation and direct the cells down lineages derived from the three germ layers. Accordingly, there remains a need in the art for methods and compositions for guiding pluripotent cell differentiation in vitro and for developing scalable sources of differentiated and precursor cells suitable for therapeutic tissue engineering protocols.